I keep thinking about that white van. It had been in my peripheral vision while I watched for movement at Mr. Perkins’s, dread growing as the markers for his usual schedule came and went. The van had been parked for so long that I hadn’t thought anyone was inside, and when the door suddenly swung open, it made me jump. Something about the way he scanned up and down the street—too casually, like a dog that happens to stretch lazily before trying to snag your food—had caught my attention.

If there’s one thing I know well, it’s how people act when they’re up to something shady.

And then he’d headed straight for Sydney.

I want to ask her if she’s tangled up in something that would bring a guy like that to her door, but I’m pretty sure she’d say it’s none of my business. And she’d be right.

The other thing I know, apart from criminal shit, is that trying to save women from things that they didn’t ask me to is a recipe for disaster. We’re just two neighbors having breakfast and working on a project, and the project isn’t “Saving Sydney.”

“Man, I haven’t been to church in forever,” I say, trying to pull her out of wherever her head went in the half hour she was in her apartment, which is as close as I’ll allow myself to being her white knight.

We didn’t go to church much when I was young; we lived in Greenville for a year and my mom dated a deacon at a Baptist church in some attempt at finding religion. Lou used to say Jesus forgives all. He kicked us out when I asked the Sunday school teacher why Jesus would forgive Lou for hitting my mom instead of just making him stop it if he really was so powerful.

“What about you? Are you religious?” I ask when Sydney glances at her phone again.

“I used to be,” she says. “It’s a lot of suspension of disbelief, though, and the idea of someone watching my every move creeps me out, whether it’s Santa or Jesus. I guess I’m agnostic now.”

“Hedging your bets.”

“It’s mostly because my mo—” She stops that sentence like a bird running into a clean glass window. “Because it seems like the devil is real with everything going on in my life, so there has to be a God, too. Divine physics, or something.”

I smile and wipe my fingers on my napkin, then pick up the camera beside me on the leather booth seat, taking a shot through the window of the church across the street with the first three letters of the café’s name, Godfrey’s, in the frame. I flip the screen toward Sydney, and she smiles a bit.

“Clever.” She sips the dregs of her coffee. My cup has been empty for a while, but she’s one of those people who seems to always forget her coffee is there so it’s cold by the time she finishes it. Her index fingernail taps on the white ceramic mug. “Are you still applying for jobs?”

I put my camera down carefully. “Why do you ask?”

She lifts one shoulder. “Because you stay getting in my business, Mr. Twenty Questions, so now I’m gonna get in yours.”

“Divine physics?” I ask.

“Tit for tat,” she replies. “Also, I’m nosy. What is your deal?”

“My deal is—” I catch the waiter’s eye and he comes over to refill my coffee, glancing back and forth between me and Sydney as if wondering what a schmuck like me is doing with her. I take my time adding the heavy cream and sugar to the strong drip brew. “My deal is that I’m currently unemployable.”

She stares as I sip and I hold her gaze, figuring out my next move.

She places both elbows on the table, leans forward, and props her head on her hands. “Unemployable?”

I’m buffeted between the worry that I’ve said too much and the nihilistic urge to say more, like the compulsion to drive off a cliff when there’s no guardrail.

Right now, absolutely no one knows me. My mom never did. Kim doesn’t. My dad tried to but dragged me out of a disorganized fucked-up life with my mom to jam me into his also-fucked-up-but-more-organized situation.

I lean toward Sydney, deciding to at least sit down on the edge of the proverbial cliff and let my legs dangle.

“I . . . am a liar.”

That’s all I give her for now.

Her expression remains the same except for her eyes. Some of the brightness goes out of them, and even though she’s still leaning forward, she may as well have jumped backward across the restaurant.

“Word? How so?”

I clear my throat. “Kim comes from money. I don’t.”

She tilts her head. “Ohhh, so this is a wrong-side-of-the-tracks romance? Bad boy lusting after the rich chick? I’ve seen that Lifetime movie.”

I know from vegging out with my mom that Lifetime movies don’t usually have happy endings, and I wonder if Sydney knows that, too.

“She pursued me,” I correct. “We met at this local dive bar. I was there because it was all I could afford. She was there because she was slumming.”

“Okay,” she says.

“I fell hard, but then I kept thinking about her having all this money and me having none. And I just wanted to impress her. To feel like I was worthy, you know? She went to an Ivy League school. I have a GED.”

I pick up my water glass to take a sip.

“Theo . . .” Sydney smiles warmly at me. “This is not Black mammy confessional. I’m not gonna ‘oh honey’ you and tell you you’re good enough and smart enough. Get to the point.”

My bark of surprised laughter makes the swallow of water go down the wrong tube and I cough-laugh until my eyes water. “Right. Yeah. I doctored my résumé.”

Her brows rise, and I plow ahead.

“Suddenly, I’d graduated from college—a good school, but not so good that I’d stand out. I doctored my work history, too, paid some guys I used to work with to be my references—for much better jobs—if the company bothered to call.”

“Did they?” she asks, and I feel an actual physical pleasure, like taking a huge shit when I’ve been constipated for days, when I shake my head.

“They didn’t call. Didn’t ask for transcripts,” I say.

“And the guy who hired you was . . .” She raises her brows again.

I raise mine back, not knowing what she means.

“White,” she stage-whispers.

“Oh! Yeah. We mostly talked about music during the interview. Some band I’d never heard of, but I just pretended I was blanking on the titles of their songs because I was nervous about the interview. Then we talked sports teams because I saw the pennant hanging in his office and I told him about my guys who can get amazing Yankees tickets.”

“Wow.” She shakes her head and leans back in the booth. “I’ve been working in a shitty school office and you—”

“Are unemployed. Because eventually one of the administrative assistants was putting together some list of alumni for the company, something completely innocuous, and realized there was no record of me at the school.”

I sip more water while she stares at me.

“Is that why your girlfriend was being such a heifer to everybody? Because you lied on your résumé and stopped bringing home the luxury leggings?” she asks. “I can understand that, though I don’t know why she took it out on me.”

I shake my head. “She doesn’t know.”

Her eyes go wide. “She doesn’t know? About the lying? Getting fired? Both?”

“The lying. I haven’t told anyone. Except you.”

Sydney leans back and raises both her hands, the expression on her face meme-worthy. “Nope. Nope. I’m not trying to be your repository of secrets, which is a nicer term for ‘the person you kill because you don’t want your girlfriend to find out you’re a sociopath.’”

“I’m not a sociopath,” I protest, though maybe laughing as I say it doesn’t help my case. “You’ve never lied to get what you need?”

She stares at me for a long time and then shakes her head, picks up her purse, and stands up, glancing quickly at her phone as she slides it into the bag.

“Let’s go. This is a lot. I just wanted some scrambled eggs and got Dashboard Confessional instead.”

“And she’s not my girlfriend anymore,” I add, standing to follow her. “She told me it was over and then went to her family’s place in the Hamptons with the dude she cheated on me with. I think. You’re the only person I’ve told that to, too. Sorry to add to the repository.”

I kind of chuckle even though my throat feels weird and rough. I don’t want to be with Kim anymore and I’m relieved more than anything, but saying it out loud makes it more real than drinking myself into a stupor did.

Sydney squints at me. “She dumped you and she didn’t even know about the lying? What else did you do?”

“Not lie well enough, I guess?” I shrug. “Should’ve aimed a bit higher and not gotten caught.”

“You are a mess,” she says, shaking her head. “Unemployed, cheated on, dumped.”

Soon to be homeless, I mentally add to the list but don’t say aloud. I don’t want her to think it’s a request for help.

She sighs and says, “I meant what I said—I’m not gonna ‘oh honey’ you. But you get a free breakfast at least for that sob story. And for scaring away the fake Con Ed man.”

She smiles, just one half of her somehow still-glossy mouth lifting up, but she’s looking at me and it doesn’t feel like she’s across the room anymore. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this. Not attraction or desire, or not just those things, but understanding. Camaraderie.

I’m going to have to be more careful. Because there’s the truth and there’s the truth, and Sydney’s smile is enough to make me think about telling her the latter.